on having people get really mad at you
That thing I wrote about Jon Stewart and Rick Perry at The Awl some days ago had people really shrieking at me a lot, one way and another. It is kind of perverse how attracted to that kind of reaction I am, and also weird because I am such a peaceable and yielding guy in regular life. But I guess am a moth to the flame of rage, because I always want to say, how come you are so mad? I really want to know WHY, is the thing. How can you mend it if you don’t know why?
My friend Richard and I had an interesting conversation about this, in the course of which Richard said you can’t engage with the other side on the death penalty because they simply don’t care if an innocent person is executed now and then. You’re right, they don’t, I said, and that’s why we need to stay the hell away from that argument. Instead you must find arguments that the other side will actually attend to, e.g., it is ridiculously, insanely expensive to have the death penalty compared to not having it. This seems counterintuitive but it’s a fact that you can easily demonstrate, provided you can do it calmly and respectfully. Nobody will listen to you if you’re just screaming. We don’t listen to the Tea Party for this very reason!
Anyway, it is clear as day that progressives hate conservatives so much that they can no longer see straight anymore, because the very idea that we ought to try to figure out WHY conservatives support capital punishment made all these people in such a super rage with me—a harmless scribe! snort—as if I were personally trying to justify or somehow excuse that view. No. Respectful awareness of opposing views is not assent. (I forbore from pointing out that I personally am fiercely opposed to the death penalty because I didn’t want my own views in there at all.) But I do want to know why, because until we learn why we won’t be able to engage meaningfully and intelligently with our opponents. And we have to do that, we really do, no matter how angry and disappointed we are (and we are, I get that completely, indeed I share that.) There’s no alternative.
